alignment and affiliation in written interaction:

Negotiating the constructing of identity and legitimating verbal behaviour

alexanne don,university of sydneyfriday august 20, 2010

orientation

• A general interest in ‘identity’ issues: construction and maintenance within networks, groups, institutions, communities

• This mailing list such a group, developed into an ongoing conversation exploring social difference: character ‘social’ not ‘formal’ – started formal – lead to argument re the ‘boundaries’.

• Image management became (unstated) purpose

• Written communication, not spoken – texts available as archives• Allowed both an all over, synoptic perspective on identity, but more

importantly it provided for the study of response – who responded to what and how.

• A focus on relationship negotiation, and thus a focus on the construction of tenor, and the resources deployed for doing so

An example of how this played out after three years -...starting at the end of the thread what relationships are being construed in the following (atypical) contribution to list interaction...

[tvs228.56/stan33]

- Focus today on the few days before this limerick appeared onlist, and thus aim is to locate it in the local, dynamic, micro-perspective of the positionings and the unfolding relationships being construed here.

- but first a little macro, long-term phylogenetic perspective – needs also locating in a context of long (3 yr) contact of participants within this discourse community.

- about affiliation at risk – and so first, the writer uses two stanzas to call on that recognition of the latent social network of affiliation: contact/familiarity between members of this group - to refer to understood “bonds” if you like, that long time list-members will recognise [cf. frequency of lexical items to follow]

- Participation over time is key to affiliation. It is impossible to affiliate by just ‘reading the archives’. One must have been at least reading along in real time, with the interest in the developments, and experiencing the reactions and responses that go with each new contribution day-to day.

‘Stan’ set featured in ‘TVS’ thread

‘ALL’ = threads only, solikely these terms usedmainly by Stan – wider setreturn higher frequency

A little closer to the dynamic unfolding of this particular ruffling of any affiliative “bonds” developed over time through participating in the group, we come to the thread which started a few months previously... in which the two protagonists continued to argue and react to each other’s contributions.

excerpt from tvs25.6/stan18a Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999[Stan Terry]

As someone who snidely attacks postmodernism with some regularity, I assure you I don't do this to defend the current social order. In fact, I recently paged through a pomo criticism of print advertising, and found the exposition interesting and mostly unobjectionable. I also enjoyed _Godel, Escher, and Bach_. My snide attacks concern overwrought lingo like "critically constitutive fictions" and the distasteful way postmodern writers frame pre-postmodernists as cluelessly ignorant of how perspective and context alter perception. So much seems like old wine in new bottles. But the wine is good, always has been.

excerpt from tvs6.1/stan15Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999[Stan Terry]

>I know my tiny analysis of her rhetoric had an attacking tone. Yet my dominant purpose was to analyze, to learn, not to chase her away.  Not that it likely mattered in her case, but I have to say again Ter: your "dominant purpose is to analyze and learn" argument doesn't hide your anger very well.

‘her’ = ‘Mars’

whole of tvs37.7/terDate: Wed, 28 Apr 1999Subject: overwrought[Terry Stan]

Cute, Stan. Is that what you prescibe drugs for? Ter

- how one set of communicative events in a written interactive context acts to legitimate or ratify social behaviour and contributes to the negotiation of identity within the group- how moves within these events may be analysed using a variety of dimensions or parameters of tenor -- potential elements of the context of situation through construal of relationships- how the types of evaluative moves made by the participants in these events help to signal their positioning wrt other group members - and hence construe such relationships of affiliation, reciprocity and alignment

a matter of group dynamics

Text

a set of tenor variables for construing reader-writer relationships (after Poynton and Martin)

These may not exhaust the categories to which people may refer in construing dis/alignment

diagram still has Affect included, but better seen as part of appraisal resources, along with other resources for construing these three parameters of tenor. Possibly more delicate parameters of tenor, e.g. another parameter.

in any group, recognised members, i.e. participants, who make contributions to the interactions of the group, contribute to the development of group norms or legitimate practices of the group

in the context of an electronic mailing list, overt responses can ratify or question any contribution.

Persons behind posts to list feel shame or hurt in front of other listmembers, even when they have never met face to face -

- hence many responses inspired by a need to maintain 'face'—of self, other individual members, or the group with whom one affiliates or aligns.

group practices or norms negotiated over time

response is key to status or ‘power’ in groups

every communicative event both references the latent social network which participants bring with them to the interaction and/or develop as group social practice, ‘conventions’, or ‘norms’ over time. and at the same time, enacts

the emergent social network, which in turn contributes to and influences the latent social network.

context of situation

- the appraisal framework

analytic approach

- within resources for construing tenor

- within a systemic functional view of language

‘There once was a whiner named TerWho claimed to have nary a careAt feelings he'd balkDespite "playful" talkNone more humorless lived anywhere

Your turn, ol' pal. ’- what social network states, both latent and emergent represented in a move like this? i.e. the dimensions of the latent network, or positions which Stan assumes with respect to his audience? - what would a move like this likely enact in terms of these relationships? - how are others likely to respond?

Example 1: extract from [tvs172.38/stan28] contribution 38 in a ‘thread’ of over 200 posts covering 8 weeks of list interaction

some tenor relations enacted by extract 1

contact/affiliation: close contact, but rejects affiliation:

status/reciprocation: unequal (higher) status :

values/alignment: disaligned:

[ affect: no overt authorial affect: claims 3rd person affect ]

-familiarity is claimed through assertions as to Terry’s behaviour-‘your turn ol’ pal’: superficially close, signals irony to other members, demands reciprocation - construes unequal status at the same time...

-social hierarchy/authority & control/manipulation of genre: demands he ‘play the game’

-negative judgement values - dislike, ethics (good-bad)*

* See next panel

*construal of values and disalignment: [judgement: tenacity: negative](a whiner, at feelings he'd balk); [judgement: veracity: negative: provoked] (who claimed to have nary a care, Despite “playful” talk); and [judgement: capacity: negative] (none more humorless).these strategies of neg judgement in the post - realise relationship of disalignment of values or axiology—by negatively evaluating the activities he imputes to the target Terry:

- whining (complaining+ irritation+ repetition), - balking at feelings (not expressing himself clearly and accurately, not knowing his own emotions), - claiming not to have a care (lying about his true feelings), - the pretense of “play” (hiding anger and pretending play) and - being humourless;

all represent Terry as someone with values with whom no-one could align. ..

The latent network is thus set up via Ex 1 as one in which Stan possesses

- unequal (higher) ability in manipulating this genre, - unequal (higher) social status in his demand for action.

and is one in which Stan disaligns with Terry in terms of values, by reference to both

- social esteem (-ve tenacity, -ve capacity) and - social sanction (-ve veracity) judgement types.

how is this social network ratified...

The actual or emergent network arises in response—- any ‘power’ or status claims latent in any text in any interaction needs to be ratified or legitimated for power to be realised. - Responses to status-referencing acts in which alignment/disalignment, or in/equality is claimed or implied, serve to legitimate the ‘power’ of the participant if their concerns are addressed. - Disagreement may serve to accord the move as worthy of contest, and act to increase the latent (legitimated, unequal) status of the participant so-engaged.

Next, a simplified network of Response types typically found in email discussion lists:

“disagreement”, or posts expressing disalignment, disaffiliation or lack of familiarity may indeed “support” the status (power, authority, control, etc) of the respondant, although not necessarily their value system or claim to familiarity......

simplified response network for email discussion lists

Responses then, contribute to the formation of group “norms”, or what is considered OK to do or say. Fairclough (2003: 41) describes "the 'norms' of interaction as a moral order [which] are oriented to and interpreted differently by different social actors, and these differences are negotiated".

- the post from which Ex 1 was excerpted, engendered the rest of the responses in the thread, as listmembers reacted by either condemning the severity of the attitudes inscribed, or by attempting to legitimise the attitude in some way.

My brother-out-of-law John is staying with us and was in the room when I read this post. I laughed out loud, not from finding this amusing but in an amazed, 'whoa' kind of way. He asked what had made me have that reaction...how could I explain...I said, "you know that email list I'm in that's about net dynamics, well there are two men who have been in it for years. One is a psychiatrist and one is a sociology lecturer, one is in San Francisco, I think the other one is too. I don't know if they've ever met in real life. Well, they've been having a conflict on the list for a while now, and the psychiatrist one has just sent an incredibly aggressive post to the list about the other one, I can hardly believe how aggressive it is. Shit, I wonder what will happen now....."

Example 2: extract from [tvs175.40/san]

- three instances of ‘surge-descriptors’ betoken affect [negative security]- repetition amplifies and signals high involvement - affect not labelled using ‘high linguistic abstraction’ (i.e not inscribed) - distances herself from the actual participants and interaction itself by identifying the two protagonists—who are in her audience—by means of 3rd person epithets: One is a psychiatrist and one is a sociology lecturer; the psychiatrist one; the other one. - does not therefore directly address the main participants and protagonists, and she avoids interacting with them herself through the device of anecdote- uses resources of appreciation to pass judgement, targeting the post/it rather than the writer

so she -- recognises the latent social network in which Stan claims unequal and higher status, disaligned value system, and disaffiliation with Terry. - disaligns (axiology) with Stan in this instance, while steering clear of the status/ power dimension...

linguistic indictors of emergent positioning in Ex 2

Tenor parameters construed by resources of appraisal and experiential elements...so Sandra’s ‘shit I wonder what will happen next’ is at one level

an expression of negative security – use of resources of exclamative or affect-surge (shit), an expression of conjecture via mental process (I wonder), and the interrogative leading out of the text and interaction frame to future possibilities... as indicators or tokens of this. But the relationships of tenor involved are more complicated.

- the target or affector of this comment is the ‘incredibly aggressive post’, but this is against the backdrop of the insecurity raised by the risk to the latent social network in which bonds of affiliation, long time membership of the group are being ruffled. The reported anecdote says as much.

- she positions the participants in the anecdote as long time list-members (affiliated), both professionals (equal status), but does not valuate their behaviour directly (as ethically, morally, logically good, correct, true or anything else). Instead, she appreciates the post as incredibly aggressive: this likely in western cultures construes in turn an attitude of negative value – ‘incredibly aggressive’ = negative judgement propriety, hence her own disalignment with Stan along axiological lines...

‘Stan, This post of yours certainly doesn't seem 'loaded' with good will. It uses an awful lot of NEGATIVELY LOADED words. The ones that stand out particularly are: "self-pitying" and "whiner". I hadn't noticed anything in Terry's post to warrant such 'insulting' terms.’

Example 3: extract from [tvs179.42/nan]

here:- Nan addresses Stan directly, but again carefully evaluates the post itself (this post of yours; it), rather than its writer by negatively appreciating its content.- any affect is non-authorial and betokened with (Engagement) values of [deny: negation] and [deny: entertain] (doesn’t seem ‘loaded’ with good will) and graduation: intensification&amplification (awful lot of; NEGATIVELY LOADED (caps))- describes the post in almost factual terms: does not enter into positioning others in terms of affiliation: refers to ‘Terry’s post’, rather than the latent social network/assumed contact.

= close contact w. Stan via assumed meanings, direct address= slight suggestion of unequal of status via positioning self as able to assess T’s post etc = disaligned axiology via tokens of negative judgement: propriety (norms, ethics, sensibility) for this post only...

‘There once was a psych, analytic,A Freudian internet critic,His cold common sense,And a sly arrogance,For some was far too acidic.

Our Stan who likes object relations,And long Harley biker vacations,Says to us, Netdynam,"Yo group, here I am,But I'm not here to fill expectations."

You see, I actually did get the invitation for playfulness contained in Stan's post. But I only got it after the shock of the rough play had worn off.’

Example 4: extract from [tvs188.50/simon19b]

- presuming reference (re)labels the previous contribution as uncontentiously the invitation for playfulness - positioning audience members as sharing this view of the target post.

Simon uses several strategies for claiming alignment – with Stan & with list-members - plus ratifying the negative assessment in the limerick as play, i.e. legitimate list activity, in this extract from a longer post. e.g....

- evaluates Stan in both negative and positive terms, thus claiming alignment and affiliation with everyone on the list, as well as Stan himself (Table 1 to follow)

- through reciprocation of limerick form, claims equal status in terms of control and social position as well....

‘My first response was like everyone elses: "oh, that's harsh." I considered the post very much likely to cause a backlash, which it did.

Within an hour or so the sense of despair I got because a couple old timers seemed locked in unresolvable battle, was replaced with a bit of jealousy. Stan, you see, had ended his post with,

>Your turn, ol' pal.

It was an invitation not meant for me. I love limericks -- don't much mind a San Francisco style poetry slam -- and really wanted it to be my turn.’

Example 5: earlier extract from [tvs188.50/simon19b]

Simon first ratifies other listmembers’ reactions:

= positive affect towards the post as expression (versus content) by means of marked and upscaled attitudinal resources

What is marked about these instances of affect?

Simon uses an average of 5 instances of Affect per 500 words per post, but for this post the frequency count is almost 3 times as high...

attitudes towards target Stan in Simon’s response

#10: appreciation: reaction?

‘coupling’ of attitude + target + source of attitude

‘which it did’ attributes neg app: reaction to listmembers

- accommodates Stan’s neg judgements by re-casting the content in terms of expression rather than content, i.e. changes footing to challenge the earlier reactions of “everybody else”

- legitimates Stan's explicitly negative positioning of another listmember by claiming a different set of affective responses to the interaction itself as target (as opposed to it targetting Terry).

- through directly quoting the challenge of the final line, Simon recasts the face-threatening directive as “invitation”, and uses the resources of marked affect to do so.

- this content is ratified by its recognition as legitimate and even desirable behaviour. - the negative evaluation of the target Terry, and his subordination in the final demand of Stan's original post, is cast as secondary to the recognised call for 'play' within the bounds of a recognised conventional core-genre.

= Simon uses strategies of claiming close contact, equal status, aligned values, via foregrounded shared affect, e.g.

Summary: Tenor parameters useful for identity trackingContact/Familiarity – degrees of affiliationStatus/Power – degrees of reciprocityAxiology/Value ‘system’ - degrees of alignment • Identity: ‘Stylistic’ and ‘Negotiated’

• Negotiated identity via: ‘accumulated positioning’ and ‘positioning ratification’

• Tenor variables or parameters in play co-positioning enacted in interaction

• Enable tracking of moves by tagging positioning by type and degree

• Combinations of these positions in response ways of outlining strategies or manoeuvres in interaction – an advance on classical rhetoric?

• Dependent on context of (sub) culture/ the community of practice against which it needs to be read

• Requires both phylo- and logo-genetic perspectives on the text(s) involved

[tvs228.56/stan33]

enough for today